We pride ourselves at St James in having wonderful themes to help us during our holy season of Lent. This year, for Lent, the liturgy commission chose the theme: “Walking with the Blessed Among Us.” We have chosen five different saints that we are going to highlight during our weekend liturgies who will speak to us during our Lenten journey. This first saint we have chosen is a familiar one. Although she was just canonized as a saint just last year, she was honored and recognized during her lifetime by people all over the world who knew her by her religious title: Mother Teresa. The sisters of her religious order, the Missionaries of Charity, operate in more than 100 countries today, serving the poorest of the poor, reflecting the ministry and mission of their founder. The congregation manages homes for people dying of HIV/AIDS, leprosy and tuberculosis; soup kitchens; medical clinics; counseling programs, orphanages, and schools, just to name a few of their ministries. We know that works of charity are one of the Lenten devotions that we are called to practice in our lives. Mother Teresa was the face of Christian charity to so many in the world; she and her ministry was loved and admired by Christians and non-Christians alike. Mother Teresa has a lot of great quotes. Regarding the way we are called to live out our faith, she once said: “Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.” No matter what we do, if we do it with love, if we do it out of our faith, that is the best we can do in life, that is truly the work of God. Mother Teresa was a tenacious, courageous, hard working lady who devoted her life to service as a religious sister. Even though she could be tough and brutally honest in the way she proclaimed the truth of the Gospel, she also was humble, compassionate, and merciful.
Every year on the first Sunday of Lent, we hear about Jesus being thrown into the desert, a place of solitude, prayer, and fasting, a place of testing, encounter and renewal. Jesus’ desert journey prepared him for his earthly ministry and for his destiny. Even though Mother Teresa was known for her faith and for her life of Christian service to the forgotten and to the poor, Mother Teresa has also been known in recent years for her own personal journey in the desert. When hearing this story of Mother Teresa’s desert-like experience, some people mistakenly believe that Mother Teresa lost her faith or did not believe in God. However, the truth is more sublime and more complex. The night of Mother Teresa’s suffering and the starkness of her journey through this symbolic desert was a fruit of her union with Christ, similar to the dark nights that St Teresa of Avila and St John of the Cross experienced in their journeys of faith. Our union with Christ unites us in love with Christ. And Mother Teresa very much reflected that love in her life and her ministry through the union she had with Christ. In being united with Christ, Mother Teresa was able to better understand the suffering of Jesus, to better understand his passion and his horrible death on the cross. The darkness experienced by Mother Teresa in her life was also a fruit of her ministry and her apostolate, for in loving God, she was better able to understand the suffering of others, including their loneliness and their estrangement from God. The dark night of Mother Teresa reflects the love and unification she has with Christ as a religious sister, leading her to unite with Christ’s sufferings. And reflecting Christ’s death and resurrection and the redemption and salvation we receive in him, she was led to reflect that message of salvation and redemption through her prayers, her ministry, her sufferings, and her life.
The silence and the solitude of our Lenten journey is reflected in this message that Mother Teresa has for us today: “God speaks in the silence of the heart. Listening is the beginning of prayer.” I want to challenge all of you in the spirit of Mother Teresa to spend some time in silence listening to God, asking yourself how God is speaking to you in the silence. Similarly, Mother Teresa also witnessed many times of her life to the strength that she received from the Eucharist and from the adoration of the blessed sacrament. Each week during Lent, we will have adoration of the blessed sacrament from 6:00 pm until 8:15 pm in the Knights of Columbus building, where we will also offer the sacrament of reconciliation. Come to adoration this Lent and spend time with the Lord. Reflective of Mother Teresa’s ministry and service, may all of us be challenged to do a work of charity this week out of our faith and out of our love of God. And perhaps the person we should reach out to is that person with whom we are not reconciled or the person who really bothers us or who really gets under our skin. After mass today, at the entrances of the church, you will be handed a small card with a quote from Mother Teresa and with some suggestions on how to live out your Lenten journey this week in the spirit of her life and ministry. The saints are there to help us and guide us on our journey, to inspire us in the way we will out our lives of faith. May we feel the presence of Mother Teresa with us as the first week of Lent.
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